Week 4 of Retirement (and Summer)

Wow, I have had 4 weeks of summer break already! It seems more like it’s been 3 weeks, so my perception isn’t a whole lot off.

Like most summer weeks, this week was a amalgam of different tasks and thoughts.

The task I resisted most was writing down what I ate for 3 days. My acupuncturist is going to figure out my macros and see what we might change. I have a lot of judgement around my eating and my weight so that has been plaguing me. I also weighted myself at the gym and that didn’t help either. I’ve been working out consistently, so I thought it was possible my body was letting go of some weight. So far, that’s not the case. I am stronger, though, both inte terms of muscle building and cardiovascularly. (I also know that muscle weighs more than fat (volume-wise), so it’s possible my body has let go of some fat.)

I haven’t changed my diet since the end of the semester, so it’s not too surprising I didn’t lose weight. It’s always been easier to increase my workouts than to change my food. I hope that talking with my acupuncturist will help.

(Mugs from when I worked at the Tutoring Center, circa 1990’s.)

The most exciting thing I did this week was visit one of my old stomping grounds. I have a friend who is an administrator at the tutoring center I worked at as an undergrad. Tutoring was the first job I had where I could do work that was related to my field of study. Before tutoring, I had only worked in food and with kids—and though I may work with kids in the near future, they haven’t been a part of my career so far.

The tutoring job was a place that I also found community in my college. I lived in the dorm, but I kept to myself, and really just met acquaintances in classes. In the tutoring center, I got to know others who had similar interests. I also worked there for 3 ½ years, so I had a longer time to make friends than in semester-long classes.

When I first met my friend who works at the center, I told her I had known the woman the center was named after, Dr. Julia Visor. Dr. Visor used to run the center when I worked there; she had passed in 2002, just a few years after I had moved on, and since her vision had continued to shape the center, it was named for her.

I asked my friend if I could visit her at work and she pretty much set up a whole tour for me. It’s been over 30 years since I first got my job there and the center has grown quite a bit. The tour brought me back to what things were like, and since none of the current staff had known Julia Visor, they asked me about her.

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I don’t think I had ever been in that situation before—where I knew a piece of the history of a place that current employees didn’t know. Maybe it’s a rite of passage of being 50! I also never had people so interested in knowing about the past. My college students had been so innundated with people wanting to tell them what it was like before we had cell phones or the internet or social media that most of the time I tried to avoid talking about “the olden days.”

When the program assistant at the center gave me a T-shirt, a mug and wanted to take a picture of me, I knew I had gained celebrity status.

It was really awesome being in a place that felt so positive too. I wrote a thank you email to my friend and her colleague and told them that I’ve been in a bit of a negative space when thinking about students—recently, I had more challenges with some community college students than I had ever expeirenced. Plus, the end of the semester had always been hard since I would focus on the disapointments instead of the triumphs of the school year.

Visiting the center was a lot of fun, and it was the most extroverting I had done in a while so that day wore me out.

Besides that highlight, the week was pretty normal. I took my coonhound for 2 walks a day. I got to the gym every other day. I did some cleaning around the house. And I made plans for next week.

Next week, I have plans with at least one friend Mon-Thurs. Usually around this time of the summer, I’d still be hiding out and seeing very few people. Since I’ve retired, though, I’m reaching out a bit more. In some cases I am picking up old friendships. In others I am connecting with colleagues I haven’t seen in a while. I’m conscious that I will need to reach out more to actually see people since I won’t be seeing them at work. In reaching out during the summer, I’m getting a jump on it!

Peace Out (and In),

Julie